Darkness is Coming
by Dodectron
Summary: A one-shot based on Alex's thoughts just before Prototype 2. No real spoilers, aside from a mention of an enemy in-game. Players of Prototype 2 might get the references more easily. Rated T for references to blood and whatnot.


**Author's note:** This fic takes place just before Prototype 2. No spoilers, aside from an enemy you might face in-game, so don't worry. 'The Darkness' refers to James Heller, and his actions in the latter end of the game. Please tell me what you think, if you feel it's worth your time.

**Rated: T**

The darkness was coming.

His cells shivered, incensed, repulsed, excited. They seemed to wriggle beneath his fleshy jacket; the black skin rising in small fingers, impossibly sharp and gleaming like liquid onyx.

The army below him could smell the change as well as himself. They threw their heads back, bared toothless gums to the red morning light and shuffled in aimless circles around each other. The many collisions and falls didn't distract their restlessness; the same energy, circling endlessly around his system of bright red and orange biomass. Alex suddenly clenched his clawed fists and leapt from the rooftop, leaving another shattered ledge of powdered concrete in his wake.

The air was thick and humid. The result of a city of heat-expelling infected animals, the sad remains of their former bodies shambling, zombie-like, to any source of uninfected flesh. Alex briefly wondered about the hunger that he did not share with the regular infected; they rushed, scrambled over themselves to hunt down and bite or eat a civilian lucky enough to avoid breathing in the contagious air of NYZ. It was often that they simply bit a victim, leaving them to become infected over time, as if the urge to spread the virus was stronger than starvation.

He had seen what happened when they were not so merciful.

Alex whipped his arms back, biomass ejecting excess gases in a small sonic boom as the hooded man watched the crawling red tendrils that spread so rapidly during the summertime.

He could sense something. It was darkness, it was burning and freezing at the same moment of time. His spine trembled in a long, sensuous shiver, empathic for his troubled biomass. Darkness was not something that frightened Alex Mercer. He had faced horrors that did not belong on Earth. Horrors that had crawled from the hell that he had helped to create.

Alex glanced to the stubbornly standing skyscraper from which everything had begun. For his side of the story, anyway; the virus had been in the making since before his human life was conceived.

The sight of the glass pillar, so fragile beneath his feet when he chose to dash straight up the surface, yet unblemished from the war he had recently ended; another ripple of black and red flashed gold as he hid his grimace within the soft grey hood. It was another reminder of his mistakes. Another voice, calling piteously for his attention within the whirlwind of souls that ripped through his biomass-enforced veins. His hands clenched into fists and unsettlingly white teeth ground out a sound like crushed gravel.

"My name is... my name..." Alex began.

He was surprised to find that his voice, so used to grunts and animal sounds of agony or pleasure, had faded and grown hoarse until he couldn't recognize himself. The words were as foreign to him as growling or purring would be to an ordinary human being.

"A...lex. Mercer. I am Alex... Mercer."

His gravelly tones didn't communicate his unease with English and the foreign name. ZEUS was the most common name he heard directed towards him now. It seemed to fit his new, ruthless manner far better than 'Alex'. 'Alex' was a name that a parent could speak proudly about, one that you might find in the credits of a poorly-acted movie.

"I'm... a killer," Alex decided, walking slowly along the concrete roof of his new roost. The word felt primal in his mouth- it suited him. Natural.

"A mon...ster." Not so fitting. Perhaps time and disuse had separated him from the meaning of the word, but when Alex tried to contemplate what it could mean, directed towards him... all he could think of was the grinning face of Cross as he mutated into the Supreme Hunter, the faceless smirks of Blackwatch as they shot down civilians and laughed at their death throes.

The humans who shoved each other aside to reach perceived havens.

"A terr...terrorist."

A human definition, again. ZEUS wondered if he should perhaps design a new language. Something that an infected individual could speak, slurred and distorted as a half-rotten oesophagus caused their voices to be. After all, he shared more in common with the bloody rabble below. He was more alike to the savage Hunters who saw no difference between infected and 'clean' citizens of NYZ.

Struck dumb by his deep thoughts, Alex surveyed the ground below in an effort to ignore these unhelpful words. Restricted, base language. A bird had more skill with language than any human; Alex knew. He had picked up some new knowledge from the raven that his half-irradiated biomass had consumed in order to reconstruct itself. It seemed that the avians of the city would not feel safe or well-fed by mounds of corpses any longer; at least, not without reprisals.

A glowing red-orange-black silhouette dove overhead, fleshy feathers expertly cutting into and cupping the thick air in intervals. The infected eagle had seen Mercer. It cried out, not the throaty screech of battle, but the questing cry of a confused animal that knew nothing but pain.

Alex bid it to fly away with a small finger movement and watched the fiercely glowing wake of biomass behind it. No bird of prey could hope to match the speed or strength of his new minions.

Yet he did not feel elated with this success.

The darkness was coming.

Alex allowed one more frightened quiver to force a breath past tightly-locked teeth, white imitations of spittle spraying pointlessly through moisture-thick atmosphere.

Alex Mercer was not afraid of the dark.


End file.
